


Bring on the wonder

by KittKattMiller



Category: The Hour
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Love, Spanish Civil War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-24
Updated: 2013-01-24
Packaged: 2017-11-26 16:41:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/652314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittKattMiller/pseuds/KittKattMiller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post 2x06. Lix and Randall return from the hospital. 'I pushed you down deep in my soul for too long.' (written to Susan Enan's Bring on the Wonder)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bring on the wonder

Randall drives Lix home from the hospital in his car. It is raining hard and somehow he feels glad of it, the bad road conditions allowing his mind to focus on driving rather than focus on her. She doesn't speak. He understands. He doesn't want to either. It's only when he's parked in front of her flat, turns of the ignition and rests his hands on the steering wheel, that he notices his hands are shaking. His throat stings, but he wills himself not to break down. Not again. Instead he grips the wheel so tightly his knuckles turn white.  
'Randall,' she says. 'What are we going to do, Randall?' Her voice sounds softer and smaller than he has ever heard it. Defeated, he thinks. Sofia, and Freddie, and him, managing what no war ever could. Defeat Lix Storm.  
He thinks about telling her they will wither this storm, but he can't find his voice.   
He thinks about hope, but he's not so sure he still has hope left now. Not if Freddie…  
Instead he’s the one tentatively taking her hand now, and he places it on his knee, and keeps it there, lightly stroking her soft skin with his thumb. Not for the first time that evening, not for the first time in many, many years, does he find himself wishing he could just go back and start all over again.

Eventually it's Lix, who is starting to tremble and then mutters she's bloody freezing, that gets them out of the car. 'I'll make tea,' she says, leading him to her front door, up the stairs, to her flat. It's tidy. Much tidier than he expected, as if she has been waiting for him. Three bottles on the table - two empty, one half-full - that he can't help aligning though, but she pretends not to notice and disappears into the kitchen. He ventures over to the window, to look at the rain still coming down hard outside. Then she is next to him, bringing two cups, one of which he takes and sips, before placing it carefully on the window sill. When he turns to look at her, he can see her eyes brimming with tears.

He still hates it when she cries. Can’t bear it. He hated it in Spain too, where he witnessed it a lot. The things they saw… The unbearable atrocities. It’s a miracle that they made it out alive. Although maybe they didn’t. Sofia didn’t. And they lost their souls there. They fell through the cracks of all those broken, bloody streets in Barcelona, in Madrid. All that death, all those lives ruined. The despair, the sheer maddening unrighteousness of it all. And yet before, before it all fell apart, they were somehow never more alive than during their time in Spain. There is a certain kind of beauty in terror. They fought, and worked, every day, camera’s in hand, for what they knew was right. For what they believed in. But the horror. The horror. At night, in their cramped hotel rooms, they would never talk of it. They wouldn’t cry, not at first. They would light one cigaret after another, down one drink after the other. And then he, or she, would reach out. He would grab hold of her, peel off all the layers of her clothes until, once more, she lay before him, all porcelain skin, and eyes that took on the color of the Balearic Sea on a stormy day, and thick black curls that hugged her face and fell down to her shoulders and tickled his skin when he kissed her. She was all he had for comfort. She was everything. And he’d touch, and caress, and scratch, and rub, and scrawl, all over her body; rewriting what had been written there, creating new history. Until they were both shattered, until there was nothing but their bodies clinging to each other, desperately. Like survivors of a shipwreck hanging on to dear life on a raft floating in the middle of the ocean. Then, after, there would be tears. It was the worst time and the worst place in the world to fall in love, and yet they did. And with love came wonder and song and elation: that this person around whom your whole world has begun to turn actually exists; that they have hands and feet and lungs that breathe. The wonder of her name in his mouth, twenty, thirty times a day. Madness.

In the present, Randall can still barely say her name. It still feels heavy as a kiss, every time the word leaves his lips.   
‘Lix?’ He reaches out a hand to cup her face, to brush away the tears there, and her eyes flutter when he draws her near. He buries his face in her hair and breathes in the familiar scent that has haunted his dreams for so long. Whiskey and cigarettes, the heady spice of her perfume and something that is uniquely her. Something inside him, dormant for so long, stirs. There is no mistaking the flutter around his heart, the adrenaline rushing through his stomach, the arousal growing in his loins. But there are still things that need to be said.   
He inches away from her, only a little. His hand reaches for her neck - her eyes widen in surprise - where he hooks one finger around the gold chain around her neck. Pulling at it gently, until it reveals the small gold ring that hangs off it. His ring. The engagement ring with which he proposed to her, days after she had told him she was pregnant. A ring she’d refused, sternly, stubbornly, ‘Civil War’ being ‘no time and place to get married and raise a family, Randall, are you insane?’ The beginning of their end. And yet, twenty years later, she carries it with her every day, nestled against the warmth of her skin. The way he carried her name, like a small beating heart, on the tip of his tongue every day, for nearly twenty years. He holds the ring between his thumb and index now. Such a small thing. It could have changed so much.  
‘I shouldn’t have left,’ he whispers to her, the weight of his regret making his voice a cracked whimper.  
‘I told you to leave.’  
‘I shouldn’t have listened. I shouldn’t have been so… angry. For once, I should have made you listen. At least until…’  
Randall’s voice wavers. So much he still wants to say. So much he still needs to explain. How he got it all wrong. His wounded pride, his fear, back then, that she didn’t love him, not the same way. So much he still wants to hear, from her. But her eyes are pleading with him to stop. “Had we but world enough, and time.” He has only the present and the future to change things now.  
He moves closer and closer still, until he can see his breath fluttering through her hair.  
Flustered, she takes several steps backward and hits the wall behind her. “Randall? What are you doing?” she asks, uncertainty in her voice.  
He takes yet another step towards her, bringing his face so close to hers that he can make out every fleck of grey in her blue irises. “What does it look like I’m doing?” he asks, before leaning down and kissing her.  
For what feels like the longest second in the world, she does not respond. But then she melts into him, and her hands slip into the crooks of his arms as she kisses him back. Her tongue pushes in, tasting him, mapping out the inside of his mouth, before her teeth close to tug on his lower lip. It feels as if his whole body is trapped inside her mouth. He presses against her, crushing her into the wall. He turns his head to suck at the skin behind her ear. He licks a trail down her neck, over her collarbone, across the upper curve of her breasts. With impatient fingers he tugs her blouse open, while she slips a hand into his trousers and squeezes. He lets out a shaky breath in response, all he can think about is the way her fingers feel on him. Somehow they make it to the couch and somehow he manages to get rid of their clothes - his fingers trembling so badly she needs to help him, a ghost of a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. And then it feels as if time never let them down at all. Twenty years, and she is still the most beautiful creature he has ever laid eyes on. If anything, she is more beautiful than ever, not as frighteningly skinny as she was in Spain, just full, luscious, breathtaking curves. Words and thoughts tumble through his mind at the speed of light, but he can only gasp her name, when he does finally thrust into her, slides all the way inside of her while she envelops him with hungry arms and legs and scent and mouth. He drives into her urgently, as she spurs him on with whispered pleas of faster harder oh yes please don’t stop. Her legs wrap more tightly around him, heels digging into his back, while he builds a steady rhythm to the sound of her gasps. She is tight and wet and perfect; and when he starts to feel her losing control, he finds it hard not to follow suit. His lips find her ear, his tongue swirling as he moves in and out of her, and she throws her head back and says his name — soft, slow, like a reverent prayer. The second he hears it, he comes so hard that he sees flashes of light behind his eyes. And then they are holding each other and smiling at each other through blurry eyes, allowing their souls to catch them up. Right before Randall drifts off to sleep, he thinks that maybe, yes, there is some hope left in him after all.


End file.
